Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the increasingly dramatic events on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the release of the Special Counsel Report.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “Have The Democrats Jumped The Shark On Impeachment?”Category: Politics
Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.) became the first Republican to call for the impeachment of President Donald Trump this weekend. There are ample grounds to questioning the existence of impeachable offenses. Yet, Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) called Amash’s stand courageous. I agree that breaking from one’s party on an issue of conscience is worthy of respect even if one does not see the merits in the same fashion. However, President Trump stuck with his signature personal insults in calling Amash a “loser” who was motivated by a desire for attention. Once again, I fail to see why Trump engages in such unpresidential, low-grade attacks. It is not only demeaning to his office but ultimately self-defeating to his claims of innocence.
Continue reading “Trump Attacks GOP Rep As “Loser” For Supporting Impeachment”
Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have been hitting the airways to declare that the evidence of impeachable acts by President Donald Trump is not only clearly established by the Special Counsel Report but additional impeachable acts are unfolding every day. However, on Wednesday, a closed door caucus was held with a very different and apparently uncontested view: no impeachment. I have previously written about the disconnect of what Democrats are telling their voters and what they are actually saying to each other. Since before the midterm election (when impeachment was a big sell for giving the Democrats the majority), I do not believe that the House leadership ever intended to allow an impeachment to move forward against Trump because it is not in their political interests.
Continue reading “Report: Democrats Hold Closed Door Caucus Rejecting Impeachment Move . . . Without A Single Dissenting Voice”
For years, I have been critical of the spending and taxing increases in my hometown of Chicago. After politicians caved in on pensions for years to the Teachers Union, the pensions came close to bankrupting the state. The Chicago City Council has continued to find endless things to tax and is now listing as having the highest tax burden of any city in the country. Not to be outdone, the Illinois government is now imposing a $1000 state tax on electric car owners — a curious disincentive to select eco-friendly transportation.
Continue reading “Chicago Ranked As Having Highest Tax Burden Of Any Major City”
There was a curious moment this weekend when Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, publicly advised Donald Trump Jr. that he should ignore the subpoena issued to him by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is virtually unprecedented for the chairman of one Senate Committee to encourage a witness to defy another chairman of a Senate Committee. It is even more bizarre when the first chairman heads the Judiciary Committee.
Continue reading “Graham Encourages Trump Jr. To Defy Senate Subpoena”
Below is my column in The Hill Newspaper on the increasingly disconnected elements in the investigations by the House of Representatives. The question is whether there is a true strategy behind these moves other than an investigation for investigation’s sake.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “Constitutional Or Conceptual Crisis? The Atonal Strategy of the House Investigations”
There was an interesting exchange on ABC This Week with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Christie attacked the Trump legal team as “C-level” performers, specifically calling out John Dowd and Ty Cobb. However, the reason given by both politicians to George Stephanopolous is that they did not believe that President Donald Trump should have been so cooperative with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and should have refused to have White House staff cooperate freely with him.
Continue reading “Christie and Emanuel: Trump Should Not Have Allowed Staff To Freely Speak With Mueller”
We previously discussed the opposition to House Dean Ronald S. Sullivan Jr, a Harvard Law professor, after he decided to represent accused sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein. The protests raise serious concerns over academic and professional freedom, particularly for law professors who often represent unpopular clients. The Harvard Administration did not offer significant support for such values and some deans participated or attended protests despite a letter from dozens of law professors raising the same concerns. The letter from Dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana, is maddeningly vague and does not address any of these concerns over the reasons for firing Sullivan and his wife as deans at the Winstrop House.
Continue reading ““The Situation Is Untenable”: Harvard Law Professor Representing Weinstein Is Fired As House Dean After Protests”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
It would seem that either Police Forces within the disputed territory of Kirkuk in Northern Iraq have otherwise vanquished all traditional urban crimes and have far too much time on their hands or a return to authoritarianism found a new attraction with withering memories of Saddam and Islamist attacks via ISIS.
Kurdish news reports police forces are arresting any miscreant and fashion terrorista openly wearing ripped or short length jeans. According to a police source, “the decision was sent to all the police stations to arrest anyone who wears short jeans and jeans with fashionable slits or rips in them.”
Continue reading “Iraqi Police Forces Confront Crime Wave of Short & Ripped Jeans”
Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the vote of the House Judiciary Committee to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress. There are a number of conflicts with the Administration that present favorable grounds for Congress in a court challenge. This action is the least compelling and could ultimately undermine congressional authority with an adverse ruling.
I am honestly confused by some of the criticism including the recent column by Andrew Napolitano in Fox.com where he states “Barr knows the DOJ is not in the business of exonerating the people it investigates. Yet he proclaimed in his letter that Trump had been exonerated.” I like and respect Napolitano a great deal but that is not what the letter said. What the letter said was “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: ‘[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’” That is true. Indeed, it was odd that Napolitano would focus on the collusion/coordination issue when many people have accepted that the conclusion of no criminal conduct was clear from the report. At no point does Barr say that Trump was exonerated. Indeed, he included the most damaging line from the report on obstruction in saying that Mueller expressly did not exonerate him on that question. Barr was addressing the conclusions on criminal conduct and I still do not see where, as stated by my friend Andrew, where Barr in the letter was “foolish,” “deceptive,” “disingenuous,” or “dumb and insulting.” Those are powerful accusations against any lawyer and should be tethered to a clear example in the letter of a false or deceptive statement.
The Napolitano letter also ignores Barr’s statement that the report would have been released relatively quickly (removing the need for the summary) if Mueller complied with his request and that of Rod Rosenstein to identify grand jury material. It remains inexplicable that Mueller allegedly ignored those reasonable requests from his two superiors. As a result, Mueller’s people had to go back through the report to identify the Rule 6(e) material, a previously requested.
Update: The Democrats are now arguing that they are not demanding the redacted Grand Jury information despite weeks of calling for the full and unredacted report — and a subpoena that demands the entire unredacted report. They now insist that they want Barr to ask the Court to release the small percentage of Grand Jury information. That is not likely in light of the long record at the Justice Department.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “A Question Of Contempt: Why The Barr Vote Could Prove Costly For Congress”Before the midterm elections, I wrote about the dubious pitch to voters that, if given back the House, the Democrats could impeach President Donald Trump. The fact is that the Democratic leadership was never willing to impeach Trump and, once the House flipped, proceeded to place as many delays and barriers in the path of impeachment as possible. The challenge is to appear like you want to impeach without actually moving to impeach. The result is a strategy of planned obsolescence — to run out the clock on impeachment while convincing voters that they are actually eager to impeach. The problem is that voters still believe the rhetoric and are getting ticked off by the failure to start impeachment inquiries when the leadership insists that Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Indeed, I have written that if these politicians are speaking truthfully about their belief that impeachable offenses have occurred, they have a duty to impeach and not shrug off their responsibility by blaming the expected result in the other house. This week Pelosi took a different spin: we cannot impeach Trump because that is what he wants.
Continue reading “Pelosi: Trump Wants Us To Impeach Him”
There is a new report that Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. reached out to Donald Trump in 2015 to seek his help on preventing the release of revealing photographs. Trump allegedly asked his fixer Michael Cohen to help Falwell. Cohen reportedly succeeded but, in Cohen’s signature style, Cohen reportedly kept at least one photo. Falwell would go on to offer a key endorsement of Trump before the Iowa primary.
Continue reading “Report: Trump Asked Cohen to Bury Revealing Pictures of Jerry Falwell Jr. Before His Endorsement”
I recently was critical of students at Trinity College opposing the recognition of a club on Western Civilization named after Winston Churchill. Now, the same content-based bias is evident at Williams College where the student body has refused to recognize a pro-Israel group.
Continue reading “Williams Student Body Refuses To Recognize Pro-Israeli Group”
A new Gallup poll shows Donald Trump’s presidential job-approval rating hitting at 46 percent. While one can fairly note that the popularity is still lagging considerably behind a booming economy, it is also notable that President Barack Obama was at 44 percent in Gallup polling at this time in his presidency.
Continue reading “Poll: Trump At 46 Percent Favorability — Surpassing Obama At This Point In Presidency”
I was hiking on my birthday when Michael Cohen finally went to prison. By the time that he made the walk, few of Michael Cohen’s former clients or associates are likely returning his calls these days. After revealing that he taped clients without their consent and confessing to various felonies, Cohen is radioactive. However, one group of people joining the “lose my number” list is apparently chilling for Cohen: the federal prosecutors. Cohen’s counsel Lanny Davis has confirmed that Cohen has repeatedly tried to arrange meetings to share new information with prosecutors in the hopes of delaying his prison stint beginning tomorrow or securing a reduction in his sentence. They have refused. For a man who has made his career on being willing to do anything for powerful figures, Cohen is in the one place that he most feared: he is alone and out of options. In his final statement as a free man, Cohen again dangled the prospect of his sharing more information — a repeated suggestion that must truly irritate prosecutors and congressional investigators who have been repeatedly told by Cohen that he has shared everything that he knows.
Continue reading “Cohen Goes To Prison After Prosecutors Refuse To Meet With Him”